We’ve reported previously about the addition of a new smartphone development platform from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEO: 005930) known as bada (Korean for “ocean”.) Last week the company took the next step and introduced the bada Software Development Kit (SDK) to partners to demonstrate the unique benefits and opportunities that it will bring to developers, mobile operators and consumers. Samsung is a global leading maker of handsets but the introduction of bada will place it in direct competition with the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone OS as well as Android from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG). This is a tough market to distinguish ones self in but Samsung seems confident that it has created a feature-rich mobile platform that supports innovative app development.

“In providing Samsung bada, I believe that Samsung will become a true leader in the mobile industry; offering a wider range of smartphone choices for consumers. At the same time, Samsung bada presents a powerful opportunity for developers to get their applications onto an unprecedented number of Samsung devices across the world.”
– Dr. Ho Soo Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of the Media Solution Center at Samsung Electronics said,

According to the company’s latest press release, the bada mobile platform embodies the following characteristics:

User-interactive
Easy, simple, and intuitive UI that provides flash control, web control, motion sensing, fine-tuned vibration control, and face detection. Includes various sensors such as accelerometers, tilt, weather, proximity, and activity sensors, that can make apps more context-aware.

Service-oriented
Includes service-centric features such as social networking, device synchronization, content management, location-based Read the rest of this entry »

Just last week there was confirmation that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and a group of Asia-Pacific telecom companies had finally agreed to move forward on a plan to develop an undersea fiber optic cable that will bring higher speed connectivity and lower costs to the region. The project is known as the Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC) and will initially connect Japan to Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore, with other neighboring countries possibly joining in the future.

The submarine cable should allow Internet users across the region to transfer information at much higher speeds and lower costs as well as create some critical redundancies in case of communication disruptions from natural (ie – earthquakes) or man-made (ie – anchor-dragging ships) disruptions. The system will span more than 8,300 km and link Singapore and Japan directly, with initial branching connectivity to Indonesia, the Philippines and Hong Kong. It will have a capacity to carry 17 terabits per second (Tbps) — upgradeable to 23 Tbps — making it the world’s highest bandwidth cable.

The benefits to countries like the Phillipines and Indonesia are clear as these countries are looking to dramatically increase their household PC penetration, broadband subscribers and mobile Internet users. Access to over a terabyte of outgoing bandwidth in some of these countries will enable them to accommodate the growth in their Internet usage.

The SJC is expected to begin being laid in 2010 and be ready for use by 2012.

The recent weeks have been particularly hard for the web P2P community, with the Pirate Bay shutting down and Mininova turning legal. The situation in China has taken a turn for the worse (if you’re a P2P user) also, as the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has taken action against several P2P sites.

Among the casualties is BTChina, the largest torrent tracker in China. On Dec. 4th, netizens found that the website was inaccessible; the following day a short note appeared:

“BTChina has received notification from SARFT that as we don’t have a video license, our ICP registration with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has been deleted, and we are shutting down.”

It’s worthy to note that the direct reason these sites are shutting down is that they don’t have licenses to distribute video online, not necessarily because of piracy. In the past few days, several rumors have been flying on the Chinese web regarding SARFT’s actions, including one which claimed that BTChina’s founder, Huang Xiwei, has been detained by the police. This was later proved to be false (link in Chinese), as Dai Yunjie, the founder of VeryCD (the popular Chinese site for eMule downloads), called Huang immediately after he saw the web discussions.

VeryCD itself was down on the afternoon of Dec 9, which has led to massive speculation that it would follow BTChina’s fate and be shut down permanently. Although initially VeryCD notified visitors to its site that it was experiencing technical difficulties — possibly due to a tremendous surge in traffic from users scrambling to download files as other P2P sites are closed — and would be up and running again by Thursday December 10. Well 12/10 has come and the site still remains down. This lends credence to a Southern Daily article that reported that further action against VeryCD and other P2P sites was highly likely, with another wave of sites receiving closure notifications on Dec 11th.

Needless to say there has been a huge uproar in the Chinese net space, as P2P downloading is the primary method for netizens to access the latest films and US TV series. Over the years the distribution chain has became so efficient that Chinese subtitled versions of the latest episodes of 24 and other popular series are up on torrent sites a few hours after their initial showing.

Ironically, commentators think that the clamp down on P2P sites will lead to a revival of the pirated DVDs in China, which has taken quite a hit in recent years as consumers have migrated to downloading online. So in essence it’s saving one part of the piracy market at the expense of another.

Although China Mobile Ltd. ((ADR) NYSE: CHL) has offered a version of the Blackberry smartphone from Research In Motion (RIM) ((USA) NASDAQ: RIMM) since 2006, it seems like the rollout of 3G networks and the launch of the iPhone 3GS from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has driven the carrier to expand its support for Blackberry devices over the coming years. In a joint press release the companies announced that RIM would begin supporting China Mobile’s proprietary 3G protocol, TD-SCDMA and its future 4G protocol, TD-LTE in devices built especially for the carrier.

This seems like a major reboot for the relationship between the leading Chinese mobile carrier and the leading smartphone manufacturer for business users. The two companies will continue to drive growth in the enterprise business segment which they’ve been targeting since 2006 — not very effectively — and will also begin targeting the device and associated Blackberry Internet Service to the extensive small-to-medium business (SMB) and professional consumer markets in China. The expanded relationship will also include greater development resources from the two companies focused on developing more localized content and applications to Chinese customers.

“BlackBerry smartphones are the world’s leading communications tool for business users and are increasingly adopted by consumers for their powerful messaging and multimedia capabilities. In addition to growing the established enterprise market, we also plan to offer BlackBerry Internet Service to individuals and SMBs in China. Furthermore, we are expanding our strategic objectives together as RIM plans to support TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE technologies on BlackBerry smartphones.”
– Wang Jianzhou, Chairman and CEO, China Mobile

We reported on the Q3 earnings results for Baidu, Inc. ((ADR) NASDAQ: BIDU) back at the end of October and pointed out that Q4 forecasts were on the low side due to the impending completion of the transition from the company’s previous search

Baidu

advertising system — aka Baidu Classic — to the revamped Phoenix Nest ad system. Well it was expected that Phoenix Nest would be fully operational for all customers by December 1 and that deadline has been kept. Last week the company put Baidu Classic to bed and made Phoenix Nest its new rising star. So what does the difference mean to customers and visitors to the search engine.

Well from a US-centric consumer all it looks like is that Baidu has now largely copied the Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) page layout for distinguishing between Paid Keyword Ads and organic search results. The need for this upgrade was precipitated by a lot of accusations against Baidu that the company’s paid ads were easily confused as organic results and even more damning, that the company would move a customer’s organic search rankings based on the level of its paid ad spending. The end result was that consumers were tricked into clicking on ads for scam companies and some customers sued Baidu for unfairly burying their links further down in the search engine results.

Screenshot of new Baidu results page for "travel to America";the Phoenix Nest system distinguishes paid and organic search listings

Embedded above is a screenshot of the new Baidu search results page after the implementation of Phoenix Nest system. As you can see, it is very similar to Google in that it divides the page into two sides — the one on the left containing a mix of paid ads and natural Read the rest of this entry »